Prison News Follow Up

bristol | drugs and crime | news report Thursday December 06, 2007 12:48 by Bristol ABC

News on Prison Policy from Bristol ABC

An update on prison policy news from Bristol ABC

Following our article on Venue’s shameful note of class war, ( see http://bristolabc.wordpress.com/2007/11/07/venues-shameful-class-war/ ) we note with interest;

"Today the government gives its response to the Corston report – published earlier in the year it was set up to look at the state of women’s prisons. Its most radical recommendation was that women’s jails should be abolished within ten years and replaced with community based centres."

So while the Venue writer thought it funny and entertaining that anyone would consider abolishing prisons, in the case of women’s prisons, and the subject of the original post that attracted the Venue writer - this is exactly what is being proposed.

It should also be noted that this government, having rammed the prisons to capacity and beyond is planning to splash out another £1.2 billion on jails;

"The government is to build up to three supersize prisons, holding about 2,500 inmates each, as part of a programme to tackle the overcrowding crisis by increasing jail capacity by 10,500 places within seven years. The justice secretary, Jack Straw, announced that he had secured an extra £1.2bn, on top of £1.5bn already committed, for a building programme which will see the capacity of jails in England and Wales increase to 96,000 by 2014."

We wonder how much of this windfall will go to private prison contractors? How much will the new jails make people feel safer? Given the high proportion of people inside for economic crimes - unpaid debt and so forth, readers may find the following thread useful;

Avoiding Debt, and avoiding prison
http://libcom.org/node/6372